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Venette, France, 11 July 2017 – A little more than a year after its creation, which associated the Avril Group, the "Sociétés de Projets Industriels" (SPI) investment fund working under the French Government’s Investments for the Future PIA) program and managed by Bpifrance, and the Israeli start-up Biopolymer Technologies, Evertree has announced the opening in Venette (Northern France) of its first innovation center.

Hosted by the SAS P.I.V.E.R.T., a private company based on a public-private partnership with the prime objective of driving the ITE P.I.V.E.R.T.[1], this new center covering 1000 m² illustrates Evertree’s ambition to make an active contribution to developing plant chemistry in France. The specificity of this young company is the development of viable alternatives to fossil-based products using new techniques to exploit vegetable proteins, a renewable and promising agricultural raw material.

Evertree has thus invested more than €1.5 million in this first innovation center and benefited from support from SAS P.I.V.E.R.T. at each stage in its installation in Venette. The center contains three main units: a Proteochem® (protein chemistry) laboratory; an industrial unit to test applications and another unit to develop processes and manage product manufacture.

Opened on 10 July, the center has enabled the creation of ten jobs which include six research scientists. Its activities are now set to grow: more than 50 innovation projects are under way, either to finalize the development of SynerXiD™, the first family of products designed, manufactured and sold by Evertree to the wood-based composite panels industry (see below), or to prepare the launch of new products and applications.

A first family of products that could revolutionize the composite panels industry

The first studies by Evertree focused on manufacturing a resin additive obtained using rapeseed protein. Conceived by the start-up Biopolymer Technologies and subsequently developed in partnership with Sofiprotéol (Avril’s finance and development company), this innovation opens the way towards a new generation of wood-based composite panels (OSB, MDF/HDF and chipboard). It also gave rise to SynerXiD™, the first family of products that can now reduce, or even avoid, the use of formaldehyde in these panels. Present in numerous common products (resins, coatings, paints or even some materials), this volatile organic compound (VOC) is the subject of much attention from both industry and consumers because of its potential impacts on health and the environment.

Evertree’s technologies offer industrial sectors and end-users benefits that are not only ecological and health-related but technological and economic. Their performance is identical to, or even better than, that of the petrochemical compounds currently in use. It is thus possible to use less resin – and notably formaldehyde – to achieve equivalent performance, and optimize their dissemination, thus enabling significant gains in productivity.

According to Fabrice GARRIGUE, President of Evertree: "Our first plant-based products have been tested successfully at an industrial scale in the production of wood-based panels in the USA. Our customers were indeed able to make effective reductions in the use of petrochemical resins, and notably those containing formaldehyde, without this affecting the manufacturing process and while retaining, or even surpassing, quality and performance standards. Our R&D center in Venette will allow us to pursue these developments, adapt our products to the needs of each customer and advance further to the benefit of the wood-based panel industry, before we target other market segments.”

For Michel BOUCLY, Deputy CEO of the Avril Group: ”By enhancing our valorization of the protein fraction of rapeseed grain, Avril and Evertree are well placed to provide innovative and sustainable responses to the demands of industry and consumers throughout the world, while at the same time creating value for different sectors of agriculture and industry.”

Evertree is a young company that is revolutionizing industrial processes and materials. It all started with a small laboratory where two scientists had the idea of exploring the potential of oilseed and protein meals. Their efforts led them to develop unique and exclusive technologies consolidated around nine families of patents, the first to be exploited being wood-based composite panels. Since then, the company has seen sustained growth driven by a pipeline full of products and patents, acknowledged plant-based solutions and solid financial support. Evertree will very soon be entering a new phase by equipping itself with industrial production capacities for the first range of SynerXiD™ products for the composite panels industry. The next products to use Evertree technologies could concern other applications related to materials and adhesives, or as structuring agents in cosmetics or rheological modifiers, to mention just a few examples.

Avril is the industrial and finance actor of the French oilseeds and proteins sectors.

Set up in 1983 at the initiative of French farmers in order to assure long-term markets for French agricultural products, Avril has become a major industrial and financial group that is developing in France and internationally.

It is present in sectors as diverse as human foods, animal feeds and expertise, renewable energies and chemistry, and owns a portfolio of strong brands that are leaders in their markets: Diester®, Sanders, Lesieur, Puget, Matines, Bunica, Taous, etc.

In nearly 35 years, the Group has changed in size but its purpose has remained the same: to create sustainable value in the vegetable oils and proteins sector while contributing to better foods for humans and preservation of the planet.

To fulfil its mission, Avril draws strength from its industrial activities organized around plant production and livestock sectors, and from its financial arm which operates through Sofiprotéol, its finance and development company.

In 2016, the Avril Group achieved turnover worth €5.9 billion. It counts 7,200 employees working in 21 countries.

Managed by Bpifrance on behalf of the French State as part of the PIA Future Investments Program, the purpose of this fund is to enable industrial projects with the best prospects for business and employment in industrial sectors to find support for their development.

The fund acts as a prudent equity investor in project companies with industrialization projects selected for their growth potential, the industry’s current position and their contribution to environmental and energy transition. It therefore constitutes one of the financial levers of the ‘New Industrial France’.

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Bpifrance

Bpifrance, a subsidiary of Caisse des Dépôts and the French State, is a trusted partner of entrepreneurs which provides companies with credit, collateral and equity financing support from start up through to stock exchange listing. Bpifrance also provides guidance services and enhanced support for innovation, external growth and export, in partnership with Business France and Coface.

Bpifrance offers companies a continuum of financing for each key stage of their development and an offer adapted to specific regional features.

With 50 regional offices (90% of decisions are made regionally), Bpifrance offers entrepreneurs a tool for economic competitiveness. Bpifrance works in support of the public policies pursued nationally and regionally by the French government, to meet three objectives:

• support the growth of businesses;

• prepare for future competitiveness;

• contribute to the development of a favorable ecosystem for entrepreneurship.

With Bpifrance, companies have a strong and effective local contact to meet all their financial, innovation and investment needs.

Founded in 2010, Biopolymer Technologies (BPT) is an industrial science and technology development startup, specializing in the domains of Nano chemistry and bio-technology.

The company's mission is to provide industries with the technology for producing non-food-plant derived, high performing polymers and materials as a competitive and sustainable alternative to fossil-oil based products.

Its R&D and IP team has developed and tested a broad range of technologies related to the use of plant proteins in applications such as, but not limited to, wood composite boards and polyurethane foams.

Categories

Abera

Specialised in slaughtering and cutting up pigs, Abera provides quality service and "tailor-made" products to wholesalers and industrial pork butchers within and outside France. Thanks to its 800 partner livestock farmers and modern, efficient facilities, Abera has been one of France's top ten pork abattoirs for more than 20 years.

Expur

Established in Romania, Expur collects rapeseeds and sunflower seeds and transforms them into edible oil for human nutrition, oilseed meal for animal nutrition, and biodiesel. Expur also packages its table oils and sells them under its own or distributor brands.

Lesieur

Matines

Matines is the number 1 egg brand in France. Created in 1985, the Matines brand has become the most recognised and popular egg brand in the country, and leads the egg market thanks to numerous original initiatives that have marked the history of egg production: free-range eggs, Label Rouge, organic products, etc.

MiXscience

An innovative company with expertise in nutrition and animal products, MiXscience provides its customers – companies in French and international animal production sectors – with a wide range of products and services: sector organisation consultancy, zootechnical and nutrition expertise, premix production, industrial expertise in animal nutrition, and the design of nutritional and mineral solutions.

Lesieur Cristal

Oleon

Oleon designs and produces molecules and ingredients from vegetable oils and animal fats, which are marketed to numerous industries (pharmaceutical, chemistry, food-processing, energy, detergents, public building works, etc.) as renewable solutions that combine technological performances, respect for people and the preservation of the environment.

Ovipac

Specialising in the creation of ready-to-use egg products, Ovipac offers a whole range of fresh, dry and frozen ovoproducts designed for foodservices (commercial catering, collective catering and bakers/pastry-makers).

Saipol

Saipol produces and markets in France refined vegetable oils for human nutrition, protein-rich oilseed meal for animal nutrition, biodiesel under the Diester® brand for incorporation into petroleum diesel, and the vegetable glycerine used by numerous industries.

Sanders

France's leader in animal nutrition, Sanders contributes a whole range of responses to the expectations and needs of all companies in the animal product sectors. Sanders undertakes to keep its promise on a daily basis: to provide added value to livestock farmers, manufacturers, and consumers, while responding to societal and environmental concerns.

Sopral

For nearly 50 years, Sopral has been cultivating its expertise as a dog, cat and horse food manufacturer by providing innovative nutritional solutions, which it sells to professionals and specialist channels. Sopral notably possesses sophisticated expertise in the manufacture of dry extruded food for cats and dogs under the Pro-Nutrition Flatazor brand, and high-quality flaked horse feed under the Dynavena brand.

Terrial

A specialist in fertilisers and the development of organic by-products, Terrial enables farmers to limit the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides while improving the qualitative criteria of products.

Theseo

Theseo designs, produces and markets products and services for hygiene in buildings and animals, breeding equipment and water treatment. Thanks to its RDI department and external business development partners, Theseo deploys innovative solutions within and outside France to improve health security, animal well-being and the performance of all kinds of livestock farms.